


Somniomancy

by verity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saito was a Muggle with very big pockets. He knew enough to understand that there was something a little dodgy about Arthur's science—"I went to a magnet school as a child," Arthur had said, to which Eames had replied, "Yes, love, we've read your C.V."—and that he ought not inquire too deeply into the runes carved into Cobb's briefcase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somniomancy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts).



> For Ashe, as in all things. Greatest thanks to Brutti for Britpicking. Any errors that remain are my own. <3

"At Salem, they've got a special name for everything," Eames said, nodding Arthur's way. "They've probably got a special name for picking your nose."

Arthur was not picking his nose. He was standing at the table in the back of the room, his head bent over a Pensieve, memories swirling like silver fog above the confines of the shallow basin. It was the very latest model, obviously, as if that sort of thing mattered. Ariadne kept glancing over toward Arthur, or perhaps the Pensieve. She probably thought she was being subtle. "I've heard of Oneiromancy," she said to Eames. "But that's divination."

Eames shrugged. "All dreams, my dear."

Ariadne opened her mouth, looked toward Arthur again, and exhaled. She had very white, straight teeth set in her bow of a mouth; she was very pretty, and young. Eames was patient with her for other reasons. "Can I—"

"I'm popping out for a smoke," Eames said. "Go on, have yourself a look."

—

It was grey out, massed clouds fading into each other and obscuring the last of the day's weak sun. Eames Apparated onto the roof, which featured worn tile, a constantly fuming exhaust pipe, and a pleasant view of the rundown Muggle neighborhood next to the warehouse where Cobb had them set up shop. If it weren't for the signs and the UK's extradition policy with the US, Eames could have been in Bradford or Burnley. Ah, well.

Eames dug out his creased pack of Dunhills and tapped one out into his palm, lit it with a flashy bit of wandless magic that'd taken him a year to master. Sometimes he liked to give bit of a show. He warmed his hands around the lit end of the fag while he turned the job over in his mind. At Hogwarts, Eames had earned a bad name for laziness early on and been content to coast on those laurels, such as they were. Didn't mean he didn't get hot for a challenge or that he had no brains in his head. Arthur listed his own marks on his C.V., which he'd shared with Eames on one of their first jobs together. "Yours?" he'd said. "I'm a forger," Eames had said with an easy smile. "But you can trust my work."

—

When Eames returned, Arthur had surfaced to explain the finer points of the Pensieve to Ariadne. "In Somniomancy—"

"It's just Legilimency with a pot," Eames said. "I use one of my granny's." Grandmum had been Head Girl and apprenticed with Flamel before she married a Duke, but it was the truth.

Arthur's eyes narrowed. Ariadne looked between them for a moment before she gave up and turned her attention back to Arthur. She'd only just left Beauxbatons, where she'd been Miles's star pupil, so she was ripe for Arthur's particular charms. Let her be wooed. They needed Ariadne far more than she needed them, but she'd be in too deep before she realized that if Eames's luck held.

Eames himself had never been so starry-eyed or in need of persuasion; he'd learned to smoke in the woods behind the manor house when he was ten, choking on B&H stolen from Cousin Lida. He'd no interest in Dad's pipe, but he'd always been fascinated with the way Muggles made things, cheap and disposable, fresh for a moment only. Taking something so ephemeral and easily replaced hardly seemed criminal. It was the same way with dreams.

—

Legilimency was a subtle art, one that Eames took to disappointingly naturally. At first it felt incredible, having the power to enter someone's mind and rifle through as you wished, but it grew tedious with repetition and diminished effort. People's minds were rather boring—always thinking, laundry? bank? supper? and some flavor of child? partner? cat?—and Eames didn't need access to them to get people to believe his ideas had always been their own. He'd given up on it almost by the time he left school.

"It's not a Dark Art," Ariadne said to Eames while she was waiting for Arthur to wrap up for the night. Arthur wasn't going to wrap up, but the sofa in back was alright to have a kip on if she felt that way. "It isn't, right?"

"Well, they don't teach it at Hogwarts, do they?" Eames said for the pleasure of watching her nose crinkle in annoyance.

The pleasure of becoming someone else was difficult to describe. Eames couldn't convey it to Arthur, with his words for everything, nor was he interested in distilling it down for broader consumption. Forgery, like acting, required giving yourself while giving yourself up: replacing yourself with someone else, or filling in the hollows of a sketch with all of you. Eames had been quite bad at it, at first, which was shocking and wholly satisfying. Unlike Legilimency, it never left him bored.

—

Saito was a Muggle with very big pockets. He knew enough to understand that there was something a little dodgy about Arthur's science—"I went to a magnet school as a child," Arthur had said, to which Eames had replied, "Yes, love, we've read your C.V."—and that he ought not inquire too deeply into the runes carved into Cobb's briefcase. Cobb and Arthur were very clever, talking about it, of course: _extraction_ , _inception_. Tidy words that didn't describe the scope of what they or Eames could do in someone's mind. What Mal had done. What Ariadne would do after they got done with her.

Ariadne'd always been _able_ to do it, of course—she was very talented and capable witch. Without Cobb's interference, she'd likely have led a productive and blameless life with her nose buried in a book until it was dragged out by some pretty girl. Eames knew her type. He knew Saito's, too; Cobb's, Yusuf's. He could reduce anyone into a type and flesh them back out again into someone just as vibrant and nearly as real. He could do almost anything in dreams.

"Come, now," Eames said, when Ariadne was having her kip and Arthur was still at it, poring over the scroll he had spread out across the desk, one end listing into the empty basin of the Pensieve. "If you're going to be up at all hours, you ought to invest in a Turner."

"I have one," Arthur said absently. "It's only midnight."

Eames said, "In Greenwich, maybe."

Arthur did look up, then. The candles floating over the table cast him in a forgiving amber wash, his fine features shadowing the pale planes of his face. He was one person Eames had no urge to reduce into his component parts. Sometimes those came together to shape a very vexing whole, it was true. Arthur cared for the details that made each job singular with a sense of purpose that Eames could emulate, but hadn't the least hope of fathoming. "You don't have to wait for me."

"I'm not waiting for _you_ ," Eames said.

They went upstairs together after that. Eames let Arthur light his fag with a Muggle lighter, an old Zippo with the monogram sanded off, and they stood together in the companionable silence of the very early morning. The city lights were too bright to make out much in the way of stars, but Eames wasn't much for gazing at them. His eyes were on the sleeping houses below, filled up with dreamers with their own interior constellations.

"I'll sleep before the job starts," Arthur said. "You know I will."

"And where, exactly, will you lay your head?" Eames said.

Arthur said, "Oh, it's like that, I see." He took a long drag off the cigarette when Eames passed it to him.

—

The reclining chair by the Pensieve was solid from a design standpoint but inferior in every aspect when it came to comfort. Arthur cast a Cushioning Charm on it before he laid down, Eames's jacket folded beneath his head. His own was hanging off the back of another chair; wouldn't do for Arthur to have wrinkles, no, even when they could be smoothed with a wand wave.

Eames shook Ariadne awake gently. "I've a suggestion for you," he said. "It's not wise to nod off around people you don't trust."

She blinked at him, still half-asleep. "What?"

"You'll be first watch," Eames said. "I'll take the sofa 'til dawn. We'll let Arthur be third."

Ariadne drew her wand from beneath her head before she sat up. Like her, it was slender and light, a deceptive front for the power that lay in the core. "Okay," she said, and then, more decisively, "We will."

The couch was just long enough for Ariadne, but it made room for Eames when he laid down. He pillowed his head on a cushion that smelled faintly of mildew and left his wand where it was, in the little pocket sewn into his sleeve. He wasn't safe here, but he was less unsafe than he might be anywhere else just now. Under the watch of criminals, wizards, and the angels, Eames closed his eyes and went to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
